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  4. Survey of gravitationally-lensed objects in HSC imaging (SuGOHI) III. Statistical strong lensing constraints on the stellar IMF of CMASS galaxies
 
research article

Survey of gravitationally-lensed objects in HSC imaging (SuGOHI) III. Statistical strong lensing constraints on the stellar IMF of CMASS galaxies

Sonnenfeld, Alessandro
•
Jaelani, Anton T.
•
Chan, James  
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September 23, 2019
Astronomy & Astrophysics

Context. The determination of the stellar initial mass function (IMF) of massive galaxies is one of the open problems in cosmology. Strong gravitational lensing is one of the few methods that allow us to constrain the IMF outside of the Local Group. Aims. The goal of this study is to statistically constrain the distribution in the IMF mismatch parameter, defined as the ratio between the true stellar mass of a galaxy and that inferred assuming a reference IMF, of massive galaxies from the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) constant mass (CMASS) sample. Methods. We took 23 strong lenses drawn from the CMASS sample, measured their Einstein radii and stellar masses using multi-band photometry from the Hyper Suprime-Cam survey, then fitted a model distribution for the IMF mismatch parameter and dark matter halo mass to the whole sample. We used a prior on halo mass from weak lensing measurements and accounted for strong lensing selection effects in our model. Results. Assuming a Navarro Frenk and White density profile for the dark matter distribution, we infer a value mu(IMF) = -0.04 +/- 0.11 for the average base-10 logarithm of the IMF mismatch parameter, defined with respect to a Chabrier IMF. A Salpeter IMF is in tension with our measurements. Conclusions. Our results are consistent with a scenario in which the region of massive galaxies where the IMF normalisation is significantly heavier than that of the Milky Way is much smaller than the scales 5-10 kpc probed by the Einstein radius of the lenses in our sample, as recent spatially-resolved studies of the IMF in massive galaxies suggest.

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Type
research article
DOI
10.1051/0004-6361/201935743
Web of Science ID

WOS:000487185100005

Author(s)
Sonnenfeld, Alessandro
Jaelani, Anton T.
Chan, James  
More, Anupreeta
Suyu, Sherry H.
Wong, Kenneth C.
Oguri, Masamune
Lee, Chien-Hsiu
Date Issued

2019-09-23

Published in
Astronomy & Astrophysics
Volume

630

Start page

A71

Subjects

Astronomy & Astrophysics

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Astronomy & Astrophysics

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galaxies: elliptical and lenticular, cd

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gravitational lensing: strong

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galaxies: fundamental parameters

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initial-mass function

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to-light ratio

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sensitive absorption features

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dark-matter contraction

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radial variations

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systematic variation

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elliptic galaxy

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gradients

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population

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dynamics

Editorial or Peer reviewed

REVIEWED

Written at

EPFL

EPFL units
LASTRO  
Available on Infoscience
October 9, 2019
Use this identifier to reference this record
https://infoscience.epfl.ch/handle/20.500.14299/161910
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